The tree will have to be trimmed this winter. It's slender branches, prone to breakage when loaded with snow, now arch above the cables which feed power and television and telephone service to the house. Though the tree grows rapidly, its foliage will be greatly diminished next summer. I will undoubtedly miss its pleasant shade on sultry afternoons, but I would miss the utilities more were they cut off on some frigid February night.
I cannot concentrate tonight. I keep going out to look at the stars, and the much-reduced moon. The dimmer the nights grow, the more I am drawn to them. All my thoughts dissolve whenever I remember that pale light, and I am compelled to return to its mystery. Paragraphs go unwritten, the dishes go unwashed, the book unread, the end of the movie plays to an empty room. I am not really here.
Another poem by Donald Justice:
The Missing Person
He has come to report himself
A missing person.
The authorities
Hand him the forms.
He knows how they have waited
With the learned patience of barbers
In small shops, idle,
Stropping their razors.
But now that these spaces in his life
Stare up at him blankly,
Waiting to be filled in,
He does not know how to begin.
Afraid
That he may not answer even
To his description of himself,
He asks for a mirror.
They reassure him
That he can be nowhere
But wherever he finds himself
From moment to moment,
Which, for the moment, is here.
And he might like to believe them.
But in the mirror
He sees what is missing.
It is himself
He sees there emerging
Slowly, as from the dark
Of a furnished room
Only by dark,
One who receives no mail
And is known to the landlady only
For keeping himself to himself,
And for whom it will be years yet
Before he can trust to the light
This last disguise, himself.
